Investigating the Secular Body: The Politics of the Male Circumcision Debate in Germany

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Investigating the Secular Body: The Politics of the Male Circumcision Debate in Germany

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Author(s): Schirin Amir-Moazami

Publication date (Print): Spring 2016

Journal: ReOrient

Publisher: Pluto Journals

Keywords: secular governmentality, secular embodiment, body politics, Muslims in Germany, male circumcision, medicalization

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Abstract

In the fall of 2012, Germany witnessed a heated debate on male circumcision, triggered by a four-year-old Muslim boy who had suffered complications following a circumcision conducted by a doctor in Cologne. Engaging with Charles Hirschkind's posed question “Is there a secular body?” the article uses this controversy as a starting point to push recent critical scholarship on secularism a little further. It argues that in order to understand the powers of secular governmentality, we need to take more seriously the entanglements between modes of power operative by the secular nation-state and the embodied attachments to the secular, as articulated both in social practices and in epistemological underpinnings of knowledge production bound and enabled by modern nation-state structures. Accordingly, the article suggests that the debates on male circumcision reflect a broader discursive framework in which the ongoing division between proper and improper religious practice is part of the (re)production of a secular body politic and embodied forms of secularity. Its genealogy can be traced back to the nineteenth century and has currently gained a reconfigured currency through the Muslim question in Europe.

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Journal ID (doi): 10.13169

Journal ID (publisher-id): reorient

Title: ReOrient

Publisher: Pluto Journals

ISSN (Print): 20555601

ISSN (Electronic): 2055561X

Publication date (Print): Spring 2016

Volume: 1

Issue: 2

Pages: 147-170

Article

Publisher ID: reorient.1.2.0147

DOI: 10.13169/reorient.1.2.0147

SO-VID: 777ab1ec-b56f-4b79-b42b-1138346a30c8

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References

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Agrama, H. (2012) Questioning Secularism: Islam, Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt . Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Amir-Moazami, S. (2011) Dialogue as a governmental technique: managing gendered Islam in Germany. Feminist Review . 98, 9–27.
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Asad, T. (2006) Trying to understand French secularism. In de Vries, H. and Sullivan, L. (eds.) Political Theologies: Public Religion in a Post-secular World . New York: Fordham University Press, 494–526.
Asad, T. (2011) Thinking about the secular body, pain and liberal politics. Cultural Anthropology . 26 (4), 657–75.
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Musharbash, Y. (2012) Die Operation war einwandfrei. Wie Sprachbarrieren und Missverständnisse in einem Krankenhaus zum umstrittenen Beschneidungsurteil von Köln führten. DIE ZEIT , 12 July, No 29.
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Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Santner, E. L. (2012) The Royal Remains: The People's Two Bodies and the Endgames of Sovereignty . Chicago: Chicago Press.
Scott, J. W. (2007) The Politics of the Veil . Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Spielhaus, R. (2011) Wer ist hier Muslim? Die Entwicklung eines islamischen Bewusstseins in Deutschland zwischen Selbstidentifikation und Fremdzuschreibung . Ergon: Würzburg.
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Stoler, A. L. (1995) Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's “History of Sexuality” and the Colonial Order of Things . Duke: Duke University Press.
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Comment on this article

[1] Abu-Lughod, L. (2013) Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Harvard: Harvard University Press.

[2] Agrama, H. (2012) Questioning Secularism: Islam, Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt . Chicago: Chicago University Press.

[3] Amir-Moazami, S. (2011) Dialogue as a governmental technique: managing gendered Islam in Germany. Feminist Review . 98, 9–27.

[4] Anidjar, G. (2003) The Jew, the Arab: A History of the Enemy . Stanford: Stanford University Press.

[5] Asad, T. (1993) Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

[6] Asad, T. (2003) Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam and Modernity . Stanford: Stanford University Press.

[7] Asad, T. (2006) Trying to understand French secularism. In de Vries, H. and Sullivan, L. (eds.) Political Theologies: Public Religion in a Post-secular World . New York: Fordham University Press, 494–526.

[8] Asad, T. (2011) Thinking about the secular body, pain and liberal politics. Cultural Anthropology . 26 (4), 657–75.

[9] Bielefeldt, H. (2012) Der Kampf um die Beschneidung. Das Kölner Urteil und die Religionsfreiheit. Blätter für Deutsche und Internationale Politik , September 2012, 63–71. Available at: http://www.nmrz.de/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Artikel-von-Prof.-Bielefeldt.pdf (accessed 14 March 2016).

[10] Bracke, S. and Fadil, N. (2012) “Is the headscarf oppressive or emancipatory?” Field notes on the gendrification of the multicultural debate. Gender and Religion . 2 (1), 36–56.

[11] Butler, J. (2001) Doing justice to someone. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies . 7 (4), 621–36.

[12] Cetin, Z., Voß, H.-J. and Wolter, S. A. (eds.) (2012) Interventionen gegen die deutsche „Beschneidungsdebatte‟ . Münster: edition assemblage.

[13] Chin, R., Fehrenbach, H., Eley, G. and Grossmann, A. (2009) After the Nazi Racial State: Difference and Democracy in Germany and Europe . Michigan: Michigan University Press.

[14] Connolly, W. (1999) Why I am Not a Secularist . Minnesota: Minnesota University Press.

[15] Dean, M. (2012 [1999]) Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society . London: Sage.

[16] El-Tayeb, F. (2011) European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe . Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

[17] Fadil, N. (2009) Managing affects and sensibilities: The case of not-handshaking and not fasting. Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale . 17 (4), 439–54.

[18] Foucault, M. (1978) The History of Sexuality . Part I. New York: Pantheon.

[19] Foucault, M. (2004 [1977–78]) Sécurité, territoire, population. Cours au Collège de France (1977–1978). Paris: Gallimard.

[20] Foucault, M. (2012 [1963]) The Birth of the Clinic: An Archeology of Medical Perception . New York and London: Routledge.

[21] Frantz, M. (ed.) (2014) Die Beschneidung von Jungen. Ein trauriges Vermächtnis . Göttingen: V & R.

[22] Gräb, W. (2012) “Beschneidung – Eine offene Diskussion,” Interview mit dem Theologen Prof. Wilhelm Gräb, 5 August. Available at: http://religionsphilosophischer-salon.de/2621_beschneidung-eine-offene-diskussion-interview-mit-dem-theologen-prof-wilhelm-grab_denken-und-glauben (accessed 14 March 2016).

[23] Habermas, J. (2008) Notes on post-secular society. New Perspectives Quarterly . 25 (4), 17–29.

[24] Habermas, J. (2009) Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion. Philosophische Aufsätze . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

[25] Habermas, J. (2012) Wie viel Religion verträgt der säkulare Staat? Neue Zürcher Zeitung , 6 August. Available at: http://www.nzz.ch/aktuell/feuilleton/literatur-und-kunst/wie-viel-religion-vertraegt-der-liberale-staat-1.17432314 (accessed 14 March 2016).

[26] Haraway, D. (1988) Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies . 14 (3), 575–99.

[27] Hirschkind, C. (2006) The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics . New York: Columbia University Press.

[28] Hirschkind, C. (2011) Is there a secular body? Cultural Anthropology . 6 (4), 633–47.

[29] Jacobsen, C. (2011) Troublesome threesome: feminism, anthropology and Muslim women's piety. Feminist Review . 98, 65–82.

[30] Johansen, B. and Spielhaus, R. (2012) Counting deviance: Revisiting a decade's production of surveys among Muslims in Western Europe. Journal of Muslims in Europe . 1 (1), 81–112.

[31] Judd, R. (2007) Contested Rituals: Circumcision, Kosher Butchering, and Jewish Political Life in Germany 1843–1933 . Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

[32] Keane, W. (2007) Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter . Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: California University Press.

[33] Kelek, N. (2012) Die Beschneidung – ein unnützes Opfer für Allah. Die Welt , 28 June. Available at: http://www.welt.de/print/die_welt/debatte/article107298713/Ein-Opfer-fuer-Allah.html (accessed 14 March 2016).

[34] Knobloch, C. (2012) Wollt ihr uns Juden noch? Süddeutsche Zeitung , 25 September. Available at: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/beschneidungen-in-deutschland-wollt-ihr-uns-juden-noch-1.1459038 (accessed 14 March 2016).

[35] Mahmood, S. (2004) Politics of Piety. The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

[36] Mahmood, S. (2013) Religious reason and secular affect: An incommensurable divide? In Asad, T., Brown, W. and Butler, J. (eds.) Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech . New York: Fordham University Press, 58–94.

[37] Musharbash, Y. (2012) Die Operation war einwandfrei. Wie Sprachbarrieren und Missverständnisse in einem Krankenhaus zum umstrittenen Beschneidungsurteil von Köln führten. DIE ZEIT , 12 July, No 29.

[38] Nadesan, M. (2008) Governmentality, Biopower, and Everyday Life (Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought). New York and London: Routledge.

[39] Öktem, K. (2013) Signale aus der Mehrheitsgesellschaft . Oxford: European Studies Centre.

[40] Putzke, H. (2008) Die strafrechtliche Relevanz der Beschneidung von Knaben. In Putzke H., Hardtung, B. and Hörnle, T. (eds.) Strafrecht zwischen System und Telos, Festschrift für Rolf Dietrich Herzberg . Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 669–709.

[41] Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[42] Santner, E. L. (2012) The Royal Remains: The People's Two Bodies and the Endgames of Sovereignty . Chicago: Chicago Press.

[43] Scott, J. W. (2007) The Politics of the Veil . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

[44] Spielhaus, R. (2011) Wer ist hier Muslim? Die Entwicklung eines islamischen Bewusstseins in Deutschland zwischen Selbstidentifikation und Fremdzuschreibung . Ergon: Würzburg.

[45] Stern, A. M. (1999) Secrets under the skin: New historical perspectives on disease, deviation, and citizenship. Society for Comparative Study of Society and History . 41 (3), 589–96.

[46] Stoler, A. L. (1995) Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's “History of Sexuality” and the Colonial Order of Things . Duke: Duke University Press.

[47] Sullivan, W. F. (2005) The Impossibility of Religious Freedom . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

[48] Tezcan, L. (2012) Das muslimische Subjekt: Verfangen im Dialog der Deutschen Islam Konferenz . Konstanz: Konstanz University Press.

[49] Young, R. (1995) Foucault on race and colonialism. New Formations . 25, 57–65.

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